as words come. But put

them together side-by-side and they

have the power to haunt you for the

rest of your life: ‘What if?’…”

“I don’t know how your story ended.

But I know that if what you felt

then was love – true love – then

it’s never too late. If it was true

then why wouldn’t it be true

now? You need only the courage to

follow your heart…”

“I don’t know what a love like that

feels like… a love to leave loved

ones for, a love to cross oceans

for… but I’d like to believe if I

ever felt it, I’d have the courage

to seize it. I hope you had the

courage to seize it, Claire. And if

you didn’t, I hope one day that you

will.”

Sophie’s letter to Claire from the movie Letters to Juliet. A cute romantic comedy. Somewhat predictable. The Full Moon even showed up in one scene!

So where’s he heading with this one? Hmmm, he could go one of two ways… but I’m going back to The Sacred Romance…

John Eldredge explains:

“God creates man and woman and sets them in paradise. And then begins our courtship with a surprise. We see in the first glimpse of God’s wildness the goodness of His heart – He gives us our freedom. In order for a true romance to occur, we would have to be free to reject Him. Giving us our freedom is an enormous, colossal risk, but necessary as He wants lovers and not puppets. Freedom is part of the explanation for the problem of evil. God is the author of some of the storms directly; but He is the author of the possibility of all of the storms in giving us freedom. And WE opened Pandora’s box. Adam and Eve kicked off the honeymoon by sleeping with the enemy. Then comes one of the most poignant verses in all of scripture: What is this you have done? (Gen 3:13). You can almost hear the shock, the pain of betrayal in God’s voice.

Yet there is something about the heart of God that the angels and our first parents had not yet seen. Here, at the lowest point in our relationship, God announces His intention never to abandon us but to seek us out and win us back. Grace introduces a new element of God’s heart. And then the long story of God’s pursuit of humanity begins. The Incarnation, the life and the death of Jesus, answers once and for all the question, ‘What is God’s heart toward me?’ This is why Paul says in Romans 5, ‘Look here, at the Cross. Here is the demonstration of God’s heart. At the point of our deepest betrayal, when we had run our farthest from Him and gotten so lost in the woods we could never find our way home, God came and died to rescue us.’”

… and back to Sophie’s letter… what if we only had the courage to sieze it? The courage to follow our heart? God’s love is perfect and endures forever. What if…? Will it haunt us? What if we turned it all over to Him?

The post What If ? first appeared on I'm Just Thinkin'.

The post What If ? appeared first on I'm Just Thinkin'.